Senior Silicon Power and Thermal Controllers Engineer

NVIDIA NVIDIA · Semiconductors · Santa Clara, CA

NVIDIA is seeking a Senior Silicon Power and Thermal Controllers Engineer to design, implement, and productize power-performance and thermal-control mechanisms for GPUs, CPUs, and SoCs. The role involves close collaboration with firmware, hardware, software, and design teams, focusing on system-level power optimizations and validation. The ideal candidate will have extensive experience in silicon bring-up, validation, DVFS, and performance analysis, with a strong understanding of digital design and architecture. While the role itself is not AI development, it emphasizes the deliberate use of AI tools to enhance debug and modeling cycles, and the company utilizes AI in its recruiting processes.

What you'd actually do

  1. Design, implement, and tune silicon power and thermal controllers in close partnership with firmware, hardware, software, and design/power-architecture teams — from spec through productization.
  2. Drive debug and resolution of power-limiting constraints, and deliver efficient, time-to-market product-specific customizations that unlock performance without compromising the thermal envelope.
  3. Deliver system-level power optimizations spanning silicon, platform, software, and manufacturing — for products ranging from large-scale datacenter accelerators to low-power client devices.
  4. Partner with the SCG Tools team to left-shift modeling, analysis, and test infrastructure — refine methodologies, sharpen procedures, and bring new closed-loop techniques into production.
  5. Validate silicon power and thermal features across multi-functional teams from bring-up through production silicon, and be responsible for the WARs and productized fixes through to confirmation.

Skills

Required

  • BS or MS in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Systems Engineering, or related field (or equivalent experience).
  • 6+ years implementing power and thermal controllers in firmware for GPU, CPU, or SoC products.
  • Hands-on experience with system-level silicon bring-up and validation, DVFS, power characterization and modeling, performance analysis, and perf-per-watt optimization.
  • Background in implementing system-level features, thermal policies, and data-analysis and statistics workflows.
  • Solid understanding of digital design, circuit analysis, CPU/GPU/SoC architecture, PTPX, advanced process technologies, and transistor/device physics.
  • Demonstrated experience operating across globally distributed and offshore engineering teams.
  • Strong written and verbal communication; able to translate complex post-silicon signals into crisp, decision-ready options for executive leadership.

Nice to have

  • Background in gaming, automotive, or datacenter market segments
  • Track record of shipping system-level perf-per-watt or thermal-policy features that measurably improved a product at scale.
  • Proficiency with AI productivity tools (Claude, Copilot, ChatGPT, or equivalent) applied to power debug, modeling, or analysis workflows — and a clear view of the outcome and the guardrails you put in place.
  • Comfort navigating ambiguity, building technical structure inside fast-moving silicon programs, and working with global teams from diverse cultural backgrounds.

What the JD emphasized

  • power-performance and thermal-control mechanisms
  • power-limiting constraints
  • system-level power optimizations
  • power and thermal features
  • power, thermal, and performance signals
  • power and thermal controllers
  • power characterization and modeling
  • power-thermal trade space